# Feedback from a community about Mailing List feature

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-from-a-community-about-mailing-list-feature/27695
**Category:** General
**Created:** [4월 17, 2015, 3:44오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-from-a-community-about-mailing-list-feature/27695 "2015-04-17T15:44:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![ashledombos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ashledombos/32/114818_2.png) [@ashledombos](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ashledombos)
#### Post date: [4월 17, 2015, 3:44오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-from-a-community-about-mailing-list-feature/27695/1 "2015-04-17T15:44:19Z")

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Hello,

my team and I have tested intensively discourse as a possible replacement to mailing lists and forums, and I would like to congratulate, discourse is really an impressive environment.

I’d like to say first that if myself I prefer using now discourse than the mailing lists, for day to day development, projects etc, it was not the case with almost previous forums that existed.  
There are so many impressive features, this is awesome. I also like the headers added by discourse: List-Unsubscribe:, List-ID:, List-Archive:, Return-Path:

Here I take in account the view of people who are used to ML only, and played nicely the game of using discourse in real conditionss, that’s to say by replacing their mailing list by discourse temporarily, not just testing the features, sending “hello” and “test message”, but for their day to day work, and bring me feedback.  
So they registered, checked the option “send me an email for every new post” and get back to work with the use of this new ML replacement. Globally, after two weeks, their opinion about the product is very high.  
It gave them around 85% of the comfort of a traditional mailing list (mailman, sympa…). However there are still things that appears as a problems for our users, some uncomfortable, other blocking. I’m not taking in account the standard notifications which, for users who tested it, are already perfect.

I have made a quick list of issues reported, with some ideas, about which I have no idea if it’s doable or not, or if the idea already has been discussed.  
So all the ideas below are for “full mailing list” feature, but it may also fit for standard notifications.

**Problem 1 : in mailing list mode, unless there is a quote (only if message comes from forum), you don’t see which message replies to which. (Importance: Medium)**

Imagine this very simple kind of conversation

> - John: Hello, there is a party tomorrow at bob’s home
> - Bob: Do you have a car for coming?
> - Alice: I’m ready for tomorrow 🙂 Do you like my new haircut?

Then John replies to Bob’s post 2 “No”  
In discourse, you can seethat the reply is to Bob.  
In mailbox, you don’t have any way to see the reply is to Bob, so it appears like this:

> - John: Hello, there is a party tomorrow at bob’s home
> - Bob: Do you have a car for coming?
> - Alice: I’m ready for tomorrow 🙂 Do you like my new haircut?
> - John: No

Solution idea: For mailing lists clients with threading management, the best solution would be to keep threading.This mainly deals with little change in _in\_reply\_to:_ and _references_ headers.

How it is now (example: a user reply to post 12 of topic 40, you receive the message in your mail box)  
message distributed gets

```
in_reply_to: <topic/40>

```

which is not related to any previous message.

Ideally, it should be

```
in_reply_to: <topic/40/12>

```

which corresponds to a previous message you have in your mailbox.

Also, references header should keep the thread structure…  
In this example, the same user replies to post 12, which is a reply to post 6, which is a reply to post 2, which is a reply to post 1.  
Here are the headers you should get:

```
in_reply_to: <topic/40/12>
references: <topic/40/1> <topic/40/2> <topic/40/6> <topic/40/12>

```

Solution idea 2: For non threaded display, or conversation style, maybe add in the email two line like this:

```
Post #12
Reply to @robert post #6

```

**List of problems 2: (a list because it was hard to separate them)**

Several problems has been reported about the _reply\_to:_ and reply+{messagekey}@ system.  
messagekey:

- when you are the first poster, you can’t reply to your initiated thread by email until you receive a reply key in your echo (which takes 10min by default) or someone else reply (importance: high)
- when you are the last poster, in conversation mode view (used in several webmail services), and reply to the conversation (with reply to all button) the message key is the same as in your previous message. So discourse is confused about to whom exactly you replied. (importance: low)
- Most email accounts add a new contact each time you send a message to a new email address. This adds a lot of new contacts as each message key is different. (Importance: low)
- We have found 6 mobile email clients, on several platforms, that doesn’t reply to the _reply\_to:_ header as intended.. Here is one example I reported with email client of Firefox OS. [1152683 - [email] reply-to header ignored because mailbridge tries to use an array value like a singular value](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152683) . Standard mailing lists still work with these email clients anyway because of the general use of reply to all by default (that includes to previous To: Header), the mailing-list engine being able to filter out duplicate messages to list members (Importance: high)

Solution proposal (I insist on the fact I don’t know if it’s doable, but just what appears as an ideal behavior):  
Instead of using a messagekey in the recipient, discourse should get message in a generic mailbox for the whole site, or even better, for the category (which should also be in a _list-post:_ header) and analyze the _reply\_to:_ header to determine to which message it is a reply.

**Problem 3: Discourse breaks the threading with your own sent messages (Importance: Medium)**

When you post a message by email to discourse, its _message-ID_ should be kept in database and included in the in\_reply\_to: and references: headers of the notifications distributed by discourse.

How it is now:  
Bob sends a message through discourse with

```
Message-ID: <bob1@bb> 

```

1. Alice replies from discourse or by email

2. Bob receives the message from Alice distributed by discourse, with:

instead of

```
in_reply_to <bob1@bb>

```

How it should ideally be

1. Bob sends a message by email through discourse with

```
message-ID: <bob@bb>

```

1. discourse keep the _message-ID:_ of Bob’s message for the next notifications.

2. when someone directly replies to his message, by email or via discourse direclty, discourse distribute the notification with

Note: even for someone who receives messages only when he’s not active on the site, the references: suite will help the email client reorganize the thread.

**Problem 4: No inline reply style possible. (importance: high)**  
While this is imho not a problem for standard notifications but many people who use traditional mailing lists regularly use inline reply style.

Maybe a start of solution: I’m sure that parsing correctly an email is difficult, especially in html. it’s why I thought that it could be interesting to force email sent for people in mailing list mode to receive them in pure txt format. It would force people to send nice markdown formatted emails that may be easier to manage for Discourse. In the case of Discourse detecting inline reply, it could import full quote of previous message.

**Additional features suggested by some members:**

- It would be interesting to have also _List-Post:, List-Help:, List-Subscribe:_ and _Errors-to: headers._
- Registered users should get a notification when they do something wrong (like not enough letters in message, crossposting etc)

PS: excuse my English, not my natural language but I do my best.

Good day/evening/night to all 🙂

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### Author: ![downey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/downey/32/166878_2.png) [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [4월 17, 2015, 3:58오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-from-a-community-about-mailing-list-feature/27695/2 "2015-04-17T15:58:19Z")

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Wow, lots of topics rolled into this single topic. I will think on the others, but for …

> [@ashledombos](#):
>
> Problem 1 : in mailing list mode, unless there is a quote (only if message comes from forum), you don’t see which message replies to which. (Importance: Medium)

This one has been discussed a lot and is “in development” I suppose you could say:

> [@Forcing email context - input requested](https://meta.discourse.org/t/forcing-email-context-input-requested/25577):
>
> I’ve added the ability for users to enable the forcing of email context in their notifications and sent a pull request to Discourse, however it requires more discussion of the feature on meta, the reason for this post. To answer @sam’s questions on the PR: I am pretty uneasy with this change, its a very confusing setting to be adding to users. Personal opinion - I don’t think it’s confusing. The option is labelled “Always include previous posts in notifications” which to me explains the p…

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### Author: ![gingerling](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/gingerling/32/42360_2.png) [@gingerling](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gingerling)
#### Post date: [4월 17, 2015, 4:35오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-from-a-community-about-mailing-list-feature/27695/3 "2015-04-17T16:35:16Z")

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> [@ashledombos](#):
>
> my team and I have tested intensively discourse as a possible replacement to mailing lists and forums, and I would like to congratulate, discourse is really an impressive environment.

great to hear, we are working on this at the moment. [https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-to-replace-buddypress-groups-and-mailman-and-phpbb/27681/6](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-to-replace-buddypress-groups-and-mailman-and-phpbb/27681/6) what site/community is this for?

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### Author: ![ashledombos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ashledombos/32/114818_2.png) [@ashledombos](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ashledombos)
#### Post date: [4월 17, 2015, 5:06오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-from-a-community-about-mailing-list-feature/27695/4 "2015-04-17T17:06:33Z")

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Hi @gingerling this would indeed be a great improvement.

I’m using at the same time where I work (in internal) and for openmandriva community.

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### Author: ![ashledombos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ashledombos/32/114818_2.png) [@ashledombos](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ashledombos)
#### Post date: [4월 17, 2015, 5:34오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-from-a-community-about-mailing-list-feature/27695/5 "2015-04-17T17:34:06Z")

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@downey would you like I split my message in several? Sorry If it did not follow the good practises.

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### Author: ![gingerling](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/gingerling/32/42360_2.png) [@gingerling](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gingerling)
#### Post date: [4월 20, 2015, 7:42오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-from-a-community-about-mailing-list-feature/27695/6 "2015-04-20T19:42:12Z")

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> [@ashledombos](#):
>
> I’m using at the same time where I work (in internal) and for openmandriva community.

Cool! I met some of your people at fossdem I think. This is me on linked in [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gingerling](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gingerling), I just added you 😄